
This unusual stoneware vase is simultaneously menacing and whimsical in appearance. Glazed black at the base and blending into gold-black toward the neck, the piece has a thick black rim that emerges at two points to form buttress-like handles. The rim, handles and other decorative elements are deliberately ambiguous, suggesting both benign vegetation and the face of a menacing beast. Mark: impressed in the clay under the glaze, P. Ipsen, Kopnhavn [Copenhagen]; incised 589.